THE FILM
TITLE: Poor Things
RELEASE DATE: 01 Sep 2023
WATCH DATE: 03 Feb 2024
TYPE: live-action feature film
ACCESS: movie theater
WARNING: EXTREME GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE PEOPLE
DIRECTOR: Yorgos Lanthimos
PRODUCER: Edoardo Petti, Roxana Szarisz, Krisztina Barkóczy, Hayley Williams, Farkas Esztella
ACTORS: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE STORY
RUNTIME: 2h 21m
STORYLINE: a bizarre scientist brings a woman back to life, and in her naivete is seduced by a womanizer lawyer to travel the world, but quickly learns that it is not the perfect world she is familiar with
GENRE/THEMES: romance, sci-fi, comedy, humanity, erotica, surrealism
Based on the book Poor Things by Alasdair Gray
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE CRITIQUE
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
This one’s a wild ride. An avant-garde, but also disgusting blend of Frankenstein, The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-31), and twisted feminism set in steampunk, Victorian England. Yep. Let’s start with the story.
I found the storyline to be surprisingly engaging and original, despite its horrors. SPOILER ALERT: We discover late in the film, that a woman - depressed and overwhelmed by an abusive, loveless marriage and an unwanted pregnancy - jumped off a bridge and died. A bizarre scientist (Willem Dafoe) finds her, saves the baby’s brain, and places it in the woman’s body. The result is the quirky, innocent (but not for long…), childlike character of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone). There’s the patchwork of Frankenstein.
The scientist, Godwin, raises her in his house and she refers to him as ‘God’. Godwin hires an assistant, Max (Ramy Youssef) to help document her progress as an experiment, and they form a bit of a bond together. The assistant expresses interest in marrying Bella, to which Godwin must hire a lawyer to write up specific papers for the arrangement. The lawyer (Mark Ruffalo) arrives at the house and immediately takes an interest in Bella… the sort of interest that most women would refuse, but in her naivete, Bella sadly doesn’t know any better. To the disapproval of ‘God’, she runs away with the lawyer and travels the world. And there’s the elements of parable of The Prodigal Son.
On her travels, she discovers sexual pleasures, the horrors of slums and death, intellect, manipulation, and relationships with other people. Bella is captivated by many things but not everything is what she thought it would be. By an ironic turn of events, she finds herself abandoned by the lawyer, penniless, and craving sex… and she becomes a whore in Paris. This is all framed as female empowerment… a horrible message for the audience. A letter from Max whisks her back home, as Godwin is dying. She returns a matured (?) woman and agrees to keep her previous agreement to marry Max.
At the wedding, the husband of the ‘original’ Bella storms in and demands that she return home with him at once. She agrees, and we quickly learn how manipulative and abusive he is toward her, and the sort of life that drove her to suicide in the first place. He’s really a terrible man. Bella boldly stands up to him and escapes back to Max. This scene, I would agree, is particularly empowering.
The storyline overall is quite entertaining - especially against the backdrop of steampunk Europe. However, once the element of sex entered the story, it weakened significantly. There is simply too much sexual content in this film. A whole montage of nakedness is completely out of line for any film. In this case, it did absolutely nothing for the story. If you were to remove all of the sexual content, the story would remain in tack. It’s unnecessary. I feel so sorry for Emma Stone that she put her whole self out there like that. Henry Cavill recently spoke up about sex in film, saying,
“I think there are circumstances where a sex scene actually is beneficial to a movie, rather than just the audience, but I think sometimes they’re overused these days. Sex scenes can be great in a movie and can really help with the storytelling, but most of the time the human imagination is going to trump it. So, it can be a little bit of a cop-out if a TV show or a movie is just filled with gyrating bodies and you’re going, ‘OK but what is this doing for us apart from the idea of, oh naked person, great’.”
It was not beneficial to Poor Things. It only made you feel uncomfortable, but not in a good way, not in the way some films are supposed to. The point of the story would have actually been more poignant had there been less or even no sexual content at all. Not offended, not unsettled even, it was just incredibly disappointing to see.
From the perspective of production, a truly incredible film. Camera tricks - like a fisheye lens! - and set design like you’ve never seen create this strange world that exists in another dimension, where all of this wacky stuff could happen. The score was perfect for the film - eerie and offbeat, which did not make for a great listening experience. A great film score should be both, so that nomination was poorly placed. Poor Things embraced a fun opportunity for the use of typography, like some other films (see my TYPOGRAPHY IN FILM list!). Each new place Bella visited was announced by a ‘sub’-title card in the handwritten font with a slight jitter used in the film poster. The credits were some of the most unique I’ve seen - impressionist paintings filled the screen while the repeated type content formed a border around the image. It’s entertaining to see this overlap of graphic design and film.
When she’s not engaged in sexual content, you actually connect with Stone's character. You feel for Bella, as a innocent soul being intoxicated by a broken world. You might even find a bit of yourself in her. A great performance… but I’m not sure I could get behind an Oscar win for her as so much of her screen time was more sex and less acting. A better focus on the character itself from director Yorgos Lanthimos would have been more powerful, so I don’t think he deserves his Oscar either. It was still amusing to see Stone develop Bella’s character from essentially an infant to a woman by the end of the film.
For having a shocking eleven Oscar nominations, I was expecting a better film. It sadly reveals the type of content and quality that the Academy members praise. It’s critical reception too reveals what people in general are looking for and entertained by - 92% on the Tomatometer, and 8.3/10 from IMDB. Though there are plenty of wild and weird elements, this is not peak cinema. I’ll leave two stars behind for Poor Things - one-and-a-half for incredible production quality, and a half star for great acting. I was hoping for a better film for Emma Stone - as a favorite actress - she’s so much better than this.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE RECEPTION
NOMINATIONS
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE IMPRESSION
IN A SINGLE WORD: engaging, but distasteful
MOST STRIKING ELEMENT: production design
REWATCH: no
RATING: 2 // 5 stars ⭐⭐
Follow me on LETTERBOXD for film reviews, movie lists, and more!
Comments